The David Pakman Show - 4/8/25: More MAGA figures turn on Trump, Karoline Leavitt does it again

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Katherine Stewart, author of the book Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, joins David to discuss the movement and what's taking place in America today. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3XSWiw2 -- Larry Kudlow explains to Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that trade deficits aren't necessarily a bad thing -- Fox news host Maria Bartiromo admits that a Trump-induced recession is now likely -- Pro-Trump CNBC host Joe Kernen is not buying Peter Navarro's nonsense about the economy -- Donald Trump's stock market has had the worst first 50 days in decades, and Kamala Harris predicted exactly this -- A confused Donald Trump says we need "open borders" in a stunning rant -- Karoline Leavitt, Donald Trump's Press Secretary, tells endless obvious lies on Fox News -- Donald Trump hosts the World Series winning Los Angeles Dodgers in one of the strangest events in recent memory -- On the Bonus Show: Justice Department scraps crypto unit, Elon Musk's X will clamp down on parody accounts, growing number of Republicans blaming Trump for stock market fiasco, much more... 🔬 Freedom From Religion Foundation: Text DAVID to 511511 or visit https://ffrf.us/freedom 💪 AG1 is offering you a FREE $76 GIFT when you sign up at https://drinkag1.com/pakman ✉️ StartMail: Get 50% OFF for a year subscription at https://startmail.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow

. Welcome to the show. A growing number of right wing voices are expressing not only skepticism, but they are straight up saying this tariff scheme does not make sense. We are going to hear from a former economic advisor to Trump. Now a Fox news host. We are going to hear from a current Fox News host whose lifelong dream seems to have been to brown nose and suck up to Donald Trump, who now says it seems like we're heading for a recession. We are

going to hear so much that is suggesting that this is a bridge too far, even for many magas. Let's start with Larry Kudlow. Larry Kudlow was a Trump economic advisor during term number one. Larry Kudlow now hosts a show on Fox Business, and he interviewed Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, and he explained that trade deficits aren't actually a bad thing for wealthy, developed countries, something I've been saying for a very long time. Take a listen to this. I don't know if you heard our laugher in the prior interview, but Art doesn't believe that the trade deficit should be a metric. I don't really either. I mean, Mr. Secretary, if you get your tax cuts and I guess you're well on the way,

you get your deregulation. These are all huge pro-growth items. Okay. We will grow. We, the United States, will grow faster than Japan. We will grow faster than almost anybody. Therefore, almost by definition, by growing faster than the rest of the world, we're always going to have a trade deficit. So I don't know why you'd want to use the trade deficit in a calculation for a reciprocal charge. I understand your point

about non-tariff barriers. I get that. That's why I would have chosen a handful of countries, I don't know, maybe 10 or a dozen countries, and really carefully pinpointed it. But to apply this to the whole world on the basis of trade deficits, is that really the best in your judgment? You've been around a long time. You've looked at these. You've done analysis. Is that really the best in your judgment? You've been around a long time. You've looked at these. You've done analysis. Is that really where we should be at? Well, look, Larry, the trade deficit, as you and Art know, is the result of three things. It's a result of the terms of trade. It's a result of our budget deficit and it's the

result of the level of the dollar. That is all either untrue or when it comes to the level of the dollar, sort of indirectly true. And I'm going to explain. But zoom out for a second. When former Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow is the voice of reason and he's saying, why are we even considering the trade deficit in terms of calculating the tariff, which is what apparently Donald Trump did?

We had no idea at the beginning. Where did they come up with these numbers? They didn't make any sense. It then seemed to be figured out that they were applied by dividing the trade deficit by two. It's bizarre stuff. But let me explain to you why Larry Kudlow is completely correct. Countries like the United States run trade deficits.

We've run a trade deficit for a really long time because definitionally what that means is we import more than we export. We buy more from other countries than that which we sell to other countries. Now, you might say, oh, that sounds bad. It's bad for the economy. We're losing money. we sell to other countries. Now, you might say, oh, that sounds bad. It's bad for the economy. We're losing money. More money is flowing out to other countries when we import stuff than the amount that's

flowing in from other countries when we sell them stuff. But that's the wrong approach. The United States is huge, strong and stable. It attracts foreign investment when other people, when, when people in other countries rather invest in American businesses and in American real estate and in government bonds or whatever, that money flows into the United States that helps to pay for those imports. We have a huge amount of purchasing power here in the United States. So we buy a ton of foreign made goods. It's not bad.

It gives consumers choices and it lowers prices. Now you could say, I want to reverse all of it, bring all of the supply chains back home. Fine. But the point here is we've designed the country to work this way. We have opted for 50 years. Cumulatively, we've made decisions politically, Democrats and Republicans predicated on the idea that we'd rather have a huge amount of buying power for cheap stuff from other countries. So the United States having a trade deficit doesn't mean we're in debt.

We might have a debt, but debt is a separate thing. It means foreigners are investing in American assets. And then we have this trade deficit, which comes from buying a whole bunch of stuff with that wealth. It's not like a personal debt. It's not, uh, uh, automatically what we look at to say things are going well or things are not going well. And consider the opposite. If the United States started to export more than we import, we would have a trade surplus in Trump's extremely myopic worldview. I guess that would be good, but it would actually be a sign of a bad economic situation depending

on why it's happening. I'll give you an example. If American consumers and businesses suddenly stopped buying imports, it might not be because they got patriotic. As Trump defines it, it could be because they're just cutting back spending. And that's often a sign of recession or an economic slowdown. One reason that the United States runs trade deficits in general is because the rest of the world wants to invest in the United States.

And if that interest dries up, say because of a financial crisis or political instability or they lose trust in American institutions, those investment dollars stop coming in. So this entire the trade deficit is objectively a bad thing and we're going to fix it. This is a country that has been built on running a trade deficit since 1970. To change that is possible. It's not necessarily good and it would definitely mean that things cost more money in a wild turn of events. Fox News host Maria Bartiromo is finally saying the quiet part out loud.

Donald Trump's economic plans could induce a recession. She has been carrying water, big water for MAGA economics for a very long time. But even Maria can't ignore the warning signs. And here is a clip of Bartiromo acknowledging this aggressive tariff proposal. If this isn't reversed, if this sticks this way, this could lead to a recession. Even Fox News hosts are realizing this is potentially economic suicide. It is going to have an effect on Main Street. Some things will become higher priced.

We will see some products actually, you know, be raised in price because companies will pass on the cost of tariffs to consumers. I would expect that. That's why you have some people saying that we could see a recession. We'll see a growth slowdown. This morning, Nancy Lazar, who I follow very closely, and I think she's terrific, from Piper Sandler, she says if the tariffs stay in place for at least the next six months, even if only 50 percent of the price shocks where we're seeing products go higher in price show through the economy, U.S. real GDP is on track to decline about one percent in the second quarter and in the third quarter with unemployment rising. That, of course, would be definitionally

a recession, two consecutive quarters of GDP decline. So this is interesting. This is the same network that cheered Trump's trade wars when they were theory denied inflation risks, insisted that the economy was going to boom under Trump and that it did boom in the first term. And now they're, you know, it's, it's such a small win. They're admitting what economists have been warning about for months. Trump's second term plan is a ticking time bomb for the American economy.

This is huge. And not just because Maria Bartiromo said it, but because it does show that even Trump's media allies are bracing for impact and Fox is starting to panic and you know that it is bad. Now I have no interest in hiding from you that yesterday we saw the I don't know how many straight days of stock market declines. As of this moment, the Dow is up three percent. There is a rebound happening right now. It's only a partial rebound of what we've seen. It may be what is sometimes referred to as a dead cat bounce. We just don't know.

But stocks pairing some of those losses from the last three days right now as we speak. So that's where we are as of this moment. Let's now talk about another MAGA TV host from CNBC. Joe Kernan has been a pretty reliable pro Trump voice on CNBC for a very long time. He once attacked me on the former Twitter now X with some really nasty excretions when he didn't agree with my economic views during Donald Trump's first term. But he is increasingly and understandably expressed skepticism about this entire tariff fiasco. And he had Peter Navarro on

another former Trump economic advisor. And Kernan is simply not impressed with the arguments that Navarro is making. Take a listen to this. And I think from policy institutes on both sides of the aisle, the methodology that was used has been universally derided as being non-serious. I don't know whether you know exactly who came up with the formula, but it allowed you to at least characterize most of these countries as being, their tariffs well above the reality of the situation, so that when you say that we're going to do half on them, it was much higher than anyone anticipated.

And I think you'd have to concede that this was not the market reaction you were looking for. There's a way of maybe incrementally trying to accomplish some of the things that the president wants to do in a reasonable, serious way. And this just almost across the board has caused what you're seeing in the stock market and a lot of head scratching and head shaking on whether anyone really knows what they're doing in this case peter all right well let's acknowledge that sure no i can't because here's here's what i'm seeing you throw a lot of stuff at me first of all the methodology was perfectly sound it was done by the council of economic advisors based based on long term studies that are in the academic literature.

And the people taking pot shots at us are the same people that always take pot shots. American Enterprise Institute, Peter. Of course. Of course. And of course, although the American Enterprise Institute, as Joe Kernan implies, is a longtime right wing, economically conservative institution. I'm guessing Navarro is going, of course, they're taking shots at us because they're probably part of the rhino deep state, whatever.

All right. This continues. And listen, Kernan's just not impressed. He's not finding Navarro's defenses of this tariff scheme compelling. And he should. Do you know anything about letting the top marginal rate go? Are you a proponent of letting that go from 37 back above 39.6 to try to pay for some of this other stuff? Because you know how many small to medium sized corporations pay taxes at those rates

if they're. That one's not my lane i let i let uh you add all this together all this together and it's not tax on overtime no tax on social security tax breaks for if you buy it if you raise the top rate that's not a Republican or a conservative. You're asking the wrong guy. Whose idea was that? So the tariffs are all you. So you own the tariffs. Anyway, you get the point.

Joe Kern is not impressed. So as we zoom out on the bonus show today, we are going to talk about how right now, if you it was done yesterday, if you go and you survey Americans, Republicans, Democrats, independents, and you say, who's to blame for the current economic instability? Even Republicans are attributing at least some blame to Donald Trump. They don't all say most of the blame, but they're at least saying Trump gets some of the blame.

There is something materially different happening here. Whether it will make a difference at the end of the day. We don't yet know, but something is happening here. Let's take a very quick break. You know, on this program, we have talked about two really important changes happening in the United States. One is that more people than ever have stepped away from organized religion.

And two, we've talked about how Christian nationalism seeks to assert its dominance in so many of our institutions, connecting church and state under the law in schools, in governments, et cetera. I fully respect people's rights and freedom to believe anything they want privately. But we need to draw a line and say that can't be pushed onto others through government and through civil legislation and lawmaking and all of these processes. That is exactly what our sponsor, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, is fighting to do. Keep church and state separate, just like our founders intended. So no matter whether you're secular and you've always been or you left religion or you're religious, but you understand that the founders

said keeps church and state separate, the FFRF has your back. And I invite you to join the David Pakman show in helping the FFRF go to FFRF dot US slash freedom or text David to 511 511 and become a member today. That's FFRF dot US slash freedom or text David to 511 511 to join the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The you who in the last few days have signed up for our Substack newsletter. We are taking every protective measure that we can. We don't own our subscriber data on any platform other than on our sub stack newsletter. So if the clamp down comes, the only way I'll be able to get ahold of you and you of me, uh, is if you are on our newsletter. So consider going to David Pakman dot sub stack.com and signing up. You can also email info at David Pakman.com and we will and signing up. You can also email info at David Pakman dot com and we will get you signed up. And of course, remember that the primary financial means of

support that this show has is membership, which you can sign up for at join Pakman dot com. We now are in an official Trump stock market fiasco, one of the worst starts in modern history to any presidential term. This term opened with an S&P 500 stock market decline of nearly six and a half percent in the first 50 trading days of Donald Trump's second term, only two presidents had worse openings, Nixon and George W. Bush back in 2001. Compare that to Obama's plus 5.7% Clinton's plus 4% JFKs plus 9%. But with Trump, we have nearly set yet another new low. And the important thing is not to blame generic global

uncertainty or the Fed or whatever. This is policy driven. This tariff blitz from Trump is what is scaring investors. The floated tariffs, the enacted tariffs, the uncertainty of whether they will be paused or not. All of this that's going on is hitting the American economy and it is hitting other economies as well. And what we're seeing from other countries, China, Canada, EU member nations, they have very quickly slapped together these counter tariffs on American goods because of course they're not going to sit there and do nothing. The framing here has been for Maga.

Trump is strong. Trump has the strength to do what it takes or something like that. But it's just not true. Trump isn't just bad for business. He's great for China in doing this because consider the geopolitical sort of impact of this. While Trump is out here lighting America's trade relationships on fire, China's moving in China's shaking hands and signing deals. They're doing what we used to do, what USAID and diplomacy and decades of soft power were able to build. Trump evaporated that just vanished.

And now he hands an opportunity to China sort of on a silver platter, the silver platter he grew up eating off of. And Kamala Harris warned us about this. Hillary Clinton warned us about this to a degree, this was all extraordinarily predictable. Trump finally kind of excelling at something, which is creating a wild amount of economic instability. No, you know, no scripted boardroom or reality show editing to help him look good here. Just real world consequences.

And remember what Kamala Harris said during her debate with Donald Trump just months ago. Donald Trump has no plan for you. And when you look at his economic plan, it's all about tax breaks for the richest people. I am offering what I describe as an opportunity economy. And the best economists in our country, if not the world, have reviewed our relative plans for the future of America. What Goldman Sachs has said is that Donald Trump's plan would make the economy worse. Mine would strengthen the economy. What the Wharton School has said is Donald Trump's plan would actually explode the deficit. 16 Nobel laureates have described his economic plan as something that would increase inflation and by the middle of next year would invite a recession.

You just have to look at where we are and where we stand on the issues. And I'd invite you to know that Donald Trump actually has no plan for you because he is more interested in defending himself than he is in looking out for you. Not only was Harris's warning extraordinarily prescient and salient, but she's also, uh, she came across one of the very same ideas that I was workshopping a couple of weeks ago on the show with Congressman Jamie Raskin, which is they have nothing for you. They have, they, they just have nothing for you to offer here. And we are seeing that right now. And sadly, you know, you look at stock charts post liberation day and they're very, very

ugly. What seems to be happening and Trump is precipitating and this is not good for the United States is that many other countries are liberating themselves from the United States and whether that's the dollar, whether that's import export or whether that's socio culturally, none of this is good for the United States. Donald Trump confusedly said that we need open borders in a stunningly disoriented orange rant yesterday at the white house. This is, I don't know how to describe this other than wacky deranged stuff. Here is Trump.

It doesn't even seem to know what he's saying, saying we need open borders. Take a listen to this. There can be permanent tariffs and there can also be negotiations because there are things that we need beyond tariffs. We need open borders. You know, we almost had a deal with China where we're going to open up China. It was almost done. Some of you remember it during my first time.

Now of course I, I can only assume Trump doesn't mean that we need open borders from the standpoint of immigration. I think he's saying in terms of trade, but then of course he's doing the protectionism that limits that. Or maybe he's saying the desirable end point to these tariffs would be to reopening trade or who the hell knows. Maybe he is saying we need open borders with regard to the movement of people, which by the way, two days ago is what Elon Musk said in a notable departure from the Trump administration's perspective on immigration.

It's all just mayonnaise up there. I don't know that there's anything serious up there other than than mayonnaise. Trump then again pulls out this idea that the country did best during a period where we had big tariffs, strong tariffs and no income tax. Take a look. Setting a table and we're going to have great trade and we're going to have a very strong country. Our country is going to be at a level that it has maybe never been or maybe, you know, our country was the strongest, believe it or not, from 1870 to 1913. You know why? It was all tariff based. We had no income tax.

Then in 1913, some genius came up with the idea of let's charge the people of our country, not foreign countries that are ripping off our country. And the country was never relatively was never that kind of wealth. We had so much wealth. We didn't know what to do with our money. We had meetings. We had we had committees and these committees works tirelessly to study one subject. We have so much money. What are we going to do with it? Who are we going to give it to? What Trump, of course, never mentions when he talks about this dream era leading up to 1913 when the income tax was enacted.

Number one, the idea of funding a government through tariffs rather than income taxes is overt class war. OK, I mean, it would be such a massive tax cut for the rich at the expense of the working class proportionately, but forget about if we did it in 2025, go back to the time that Trump is talking about. We had almost none of the federal government, uh, services and activities that we have today. Now I know many right-wingers say we want the government doing less, but really understand what you're talking about when you talk about no social security, no highways. No, I mean, it's a long laundry list of things.

If they are serious about saying, let's get rid of the income tax, let's bring the federal government back to what it was between 1870 and 1913. Now in a modern global economy, we would be like what Trump calls the banana Republics. It's not a term I use. Okay. But we, we might talk about developing nations. We would be taking the United States if we said, get rid of the income tax, but get rid of everything we pay for through the income tax and go back to the government that we

had in 1899. For example, it would be a global humiliation and a destruction in quality of life, the likes of which we have never seen probably in any country, but certainly not in the United States. He never mentions that, never mentions that when he does this little rant about a tariff based economy in the late nineteen hundreds, eighteen hundreds, rather Trump sort of disoriented when it comes to the term groceries, still acting like it's not a term he really knew until very recently. I said, we're going to try and get groceries down, right? An old fashioned term, but a beautiful term, a beautiful term. There's never been a more beautiful term than groceries.

And then Trump asked a substantive question. Why no tariffs with Russia? Because you tariffed even islands inhabited only by penguins, but no tariffs on Russia. And here's Trump's explanation. A little bit about your meeting, potential meeting with Vladimir Putin. Do you still plan to meet with him? Could that happen in Saudi Arabia? And maybe you could elaborate as well a little bit on not providing tariffs on Russia, sir. So the reason we're not talking about tariffs with Russia is because we're not doing business essentially with Russia because they're in a war

and I'm not happy about what's going on with, uh, with the bombing. Cause they're bombing like crazy right now. They're bombing. I don't know what's happening there. That's not a good situation. So we're meeting with Russia, we're meeting with Ukraine and we're getting sort of close, but I'm not happy with all the bombing that's going on the list. So Trump changing the topic, but his argument that there was no need to tariff Russia because we're not doing business with Russia. Trump tariffed plenty of countries with his blanket tariffs that the United States isn't doing business with. So that doesn't work. Trump then sort of suggesting that the Nazis did favors for Jews in concentration camps by like giving them extra little pieces of bread. Listen to this. The stories they told me, I mean, as an example, I said to them, was there any sign of love? You were there. 10 people. It's only ten, but it's pretty representative.

Did the Hamas show any signs of like help or liking you? Did they wink at you? Did they give you a piece of bread extra? Did they give you a meal on the side like, you know, you think of doing like what happened in Germany, what happened elsewhere? People. Everybody in the room is like, what the hell is this guy talking about? Try and help people that were in unbelievable distress. So Trump, I guess, talking about when the Nazis did nice things for the Jews in concentration camps, really wacky stuff. And then finally, nothing like a new war to distract from

the economic turmoil. Trump saying Iran better be careful if diplomacy fails. Is the United States under your leadership ready to take military action to destroy the Iranian nuclear program program and remove this threat? I think if the talks aren't successful with Iran, I think Iran is going to be in great danger and I hate to say it, great danger because they can't have a nuclear weapon. You know, it's not a complicated formula. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. That's all there is. You can't have it. So, of course, the anti-war guy levying

additional threats to more countries, you couldn't write that. This would not be believable. If you wrote it as a TV show, it would be like it's too outrageous. Nothing. Nobody would ever do this stuff or talk this way. And of course, that's exactly what is going on. If you've already purchased my book, The Echo Machine, now a New York Times bestseller. Please do remember to review the book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Goodreads. So important. We are over 600 reviews on Amazon. We really want to get to a thousand. It is the most important thing you can do other than getting the book. And of course the book is available everywhere that books are sold. I popped into a couple of Barnes and Nobles is Barnes and Nobles, Barnes and Nobles is over the weekend and some local bookstores. I was all over. I would just go bring my copies and go,

can I sign these? I'm the author. They put a beautiful sign sticker on it. So all over the Northeast you may find Easter egg set for lack of a better term, uh, signed copies, but of course they're available everywhere. Books are sold. Quick break back right after this. An important part of my daily routine every morning is a scoop of ag one to keep my nutritional basis covered for the day. Our sponsor AG1 couldn't be simpler. One delicious scoop with a glass of water.

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the program today. Catherine Stewart, who has covered the intersection of faith and politics for more than 15 years in the New York times and the new Republic and in other places and is also author of the bestselling book money lies in God inside the movement to destroy American democracy. Um, Catherine, it's so great to have you on, you know, last time you were on, we talked about your previous book, which was more sort of narrowly focused on Christian nationalism specifically in this book, you're really expanding the scope and talking about the interplay between religion and, and some anti-democratic elements and pulling in a lot of other things. Talk a little bit about how the Christian nationalism piece, it's really just one part

now of this broader story that you tell. That's true. Christian nationalism is, I think, the most important ideological framework for the largest part of the anti-democratic movement. But the movement includes a lot of different components. And that's why I titled the book Money, Lies, and God. Because first of all, money is a huge part of the story, meaning that huge concentrations of wealth at the very tippy top of the economic ladder have destabilized the political system in some really interesting ways. And the movement would be nowhere without a cadre of incredibly rich funders, some of whom are religious and have religious and cultural goals, and others whom

are frankly either not Christian or not religious at all. Second, lies or conscious disinformation is another huge feature of the movement. The anti-democratic movement is a leadership-driven movement, and they understand very well that if you separate a large percentage of the voters from the facts and get them sort of to believe all these crazy conspiracies, it makes them a lot easier to control. And then, of course, God referring to Christian nationalism, which is a kind of a way of mobilizing the rank and file voters who put into power the politicians that the movement favors. One of the things that's interesting is you draw these connections, which of course exist between

the different sides of this movement, billionaires and the religious right. But when you look at a lot of specific billionaires and, you know, centimillionaires, they don't seem often religious and they don't even really seem to care that much about religion, which which almost is part of the story as to how the religion becomes kind of like a tool here in a way. Can you I'm not articulately explaining it, but can you sort of give us a sense of that? Yeah, you're right. Listen, we have a huge number of very wealthy people motivated by a desire to advance their own economic interests and protect their privileges. They want low taxes for the rich. They want a deregulatory environment so they can get involved and continue to grow their businesses. They don't want any environmental regulations

because a number of them are involved in polluting businesses. And religiously, frankly, they're all over the place. I'm just going to throw out a few names here. It's by no means comprehensive. We're talking about Barry Seid, a Jewish Chicago billionaire. We're talking about the Wilkes brothers who are energy fracking billionaires. We're talking about Tim Dunn, who is also an energy, you know, runs a huge energy company. And we're talking about ultra conservative Catholic folks like the Corkerys. We're talking about Richard Uline. We're talking about some of the tech pros who are not remotely interested in sort of, they see, they're not motivated by religious or religious reasons, but they see their sort of collaboration with Christian nationalist leaders is sort of the

price of doing business for them to get the policies that they want, not just deregulation. They call themselves pro-capitalists. We just want the free markets to be able to do their thing. They're also looking for tax subsidies. They're also looking for protective policies for their monopolistic businesses. So they're motivated by wealth, not just a desire to grow it, but also to justify the vast concentrations of wealth they've accumulated. Concentrations that, frankly, if you look at the larger political system, we're seeing it's making it harder for most American families to succeed. We're seeing erosion of rights for the workforce. We're seeing the cost of living go up for a lot of the rank and file, including a lot of the voters who are supporting this movement. But they're not going to be supporting what these the billionaire policy, the policies the billionaires want, unless you can give them a

sort of moral or identitarian justification. So that's where they push the culture wars and the disinformation. You mentioned the culture war, and that's what I wanted to ask about next. To a degree, is it a mistake to, or let me put it a different way. Much of the critique from the left treats this primarily as a culture war that has developed, but it seems really as you describe it more of like a coordinated political project that's using culture and in some cases religion to the extent that it's useful to fight for that political project. Should we be seeing this primarily as a culture war that's taking place in the sort of public discourse right now? Or is that actually counterproductive to see it that way?

Some of the culture war issues matter, but we have to remember that some of the culture war issues that the right is focused on, focusing on, serve as distractions for their larger political and economic agenda. This is a movement that just seeks to destroy democracy. They abhor the principles of pluralism and equality and justice that represent the best of the American promise. They object to the idea of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And they long for a more monarchical form of governance, where you've got a kind of or like an authoritarian kind of government, where you've got, you know, all the

privileges accrued to dear leader, and his cronies, who are then going to engage in kind of kleptocratic cronyism. And we're seeing this in the current administration. I mean, let's just look at what we've had happen over the past couple of weeks. We've had an evisceration of the system of justices, attacks on the independence of the judiciary, I mean, I'll say the Department of justice. It's really calling into question the legitimacy of the judiciary at the Supreme Court level. We see a brutal and grotesquely inefficient chainsaw attack on vital government services that Americans need and want and have funded. We have an attack on U.S. national security, willful undermining of our most important alliances, and support for some of our worst adversaries, combined with spectacularly reckless mismanagement of our economy. I mean, attacks on individual rights, the disappearing of individuals for suspected speech crimes, and most recently, of course, an assault on the world economy. I mean, if markets

still have any predictive value, it's going to impoverish Americans and deal a devastating blow to the global economy. So how do we make sense of this? This isn't about the culture wars, right? This is really about, I mean, these features follow from the nature of the anti-democratic political movement that's been building in this country over the past several decades. One of the aspects that kind of overlaps a few of the areas you mentioned is the discussion of parental rights. And I sort of mentioned that term in quotes, right?

Parental rights. It seems to connect to everything from education policy to vaccine and other medical issues. There's when you say parental rights, it's it includes a whole bunch of different things. But it also seems to only be applied by this movement to certain parents who want certain things. It's not all parents rights. What do you see as the real purpose behind that framing and the goal of that wing of the movement? This movement spreads a lot of lies about public education. They understand very well that an educated public is an enemy of autocracy. And they also understand that, listen, I'm a public school parent. And of course, you want everything in the public school to be appropriate, but they're spreading lies. They're saying your kid is going to go to school at 9am and they're going to come out at 2am, a different gender. Look, the school is not allowed to give your kid aspirin without parental permission. So this is absolutely ridiculous. So I think the first thing to notice about the governing practice of the present administration

is that it really depends in a fundamental way on a constant war on the truth. The present government has no concern for the truth. It lies incessantly and shamelessly. And then, incredibly, it bases policy on these lies. So I'll give you a couple of examples. One related to public schools. They manufacture propaganda, the idea that public schools are Marxist indoctrination factories. And then they do that, which they're not. Most of the public schools are largely focused on teaching kids reading and math and preparing them, you know, learning state

capitals. I don't know how much time they spent in public schools, but they lie about it and they do so with, you know, impunity. And they do this to justify the dismantling of public education. You know, another lie they repeat constantly is that the biggest problem in our society is, quote, wokeness and diversity, equity and inclusion. Let's let's not call it DEI, which has become a buzzword. Let's just call it they're opposed to diversity, equity and inclusion. And they use that as an excuse to launch attacks on free speech, higher education, science research and our scientific expertise. And they're really attempting to roll back civil rights legislation. They repeat the lie that Democrats want to abort babies after they're

born, which isn't happening, right? And it's not true. And they use that to go after some of the most popular and effective forms of birth control. We also have to note that there's really a kind of performative aspect in everything that MAGA does, right? So they're doing this stuff, and even though a lot of the rank and file are very credible and believe it, do the leaders really believe it? I don't know. I mean, that chainsaw attack on government services is a case in point. They're posturing as tough guys with chainsaws. So they're sort of play acting that they're tackling waste, fraud and abuse. But at the same time, they're lining their own pockets with taxpayer subsidies and privileged government

contracts. On that note, there is an inherent hypocrisy or at least a double standard to a lot of what we're seeing. And this could be at the very general level. You know, we're for small government, both in terms of the number of things that the government does and the amount of regulation. And then, of course, they push the exact opposite. Like there's that top level double standard. There's also kind of lower, lower, more nitty gritty double standards like you and I have been talking about. Sometimes we on the left

assume that if we simply point out the hypocrisy or the double standard, it will sort of do its work for us and change people's minds. And just, Hey, listen, we are double standards are bad. Hypocrisy is bad. If you simply pointed out, everything will be right in the world, but they don't really seem to care about consistency. And so I'm curious your thought on whether that's completely the wrong approach here. We have to remember that Trump won the 2024 election by a relatively small margin. The issue was that there was reduced enthusiasm for voting on the Democratic side of the political aisle. So sometimes all of that energy you're

trying to spend getting somebody out of the disinformation bubble might be better spent reaching out to low propensity voters, telling them why their vote matters, reaching out to members of the base, people who want to vote, but might just sort of be a little bit on the fence about how they're going to do it and when they're going to do it. It's really important to maybe of the base, people who want to vote, but might just sort of be a little bit on the fence about how they're going to do it and when they're going to do it. It's really important to maybe babysit for the lady who has young kids. And so she can get off to the polls or maybe drive that person who doesn't have a car or might be disabled to the voting booth or turn it into a party with your friends so you hold one another accountable to vote. I mean, look, we've got elections in less than two years.

It's really important to turn out not just in presidential election cycles, but in every election cycle. And it's also really important to vote all the way down the ballot. OK, last area I want to ask you about. We've spent all or most of the time so far kind of diagnosing, exploring, describing something that is going on that is a major concern. We then have to kind of face the reality that the democratic party as the only real alternative, at least right now is deeply uncool right now. Very unpopular record, low approval made major mistakes leading up to the November of 2024 election. I've had conversations over the last six months with everyone from

just like the communications director for a member of Congress all the way up to I was invited to the white house to meet with Biden after Harris lost during that little short period before he left office. Everybody seems concerned. Everybody's asking, what do we do? How do we do what they did with regard to independent media? Okay. So there's a motivation to kind of figure things out, but it doesn't change the fact that right now I don't hear anyone super excited about what the democratic party is offering.

So what is it that needs to happen here? Well, if the final in the final section of Money Lies in God, I actually offer a series of prescriptions. I think there are some signs of encouragement. When you turn out the vote, you know, listen, this administration is destroying the quality of life for the average American. I think we need broad-based messaging that transcends the political class that meets, I'm sorry, the professional class that meets people where they are and helps them connect the dots to understanding that this is a movement that is just taking away their rights and destroying their economic futures and those of their children. And I think that that kind of messaging

can be enormously helpful. We need a big tent, right? We're not going to agree on everything. This is people on the sort of moderate center, progressive left, sort of in that big tent. Listen, it's a big tent. We're not all going to get everything we want. And frankly, we shouldn't. It's like a big family. Does everybody get what they want all the time? Absolutely not. But if we can agree on some core democratic principles, if we can agree on more than we disagree about, we should stop purity testing one another and we can work together. It's that sort of, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan a little bit, it's that sort of the person agrees with you 80% of the time is your 80% friend,

not your 20% enemy. And by the way, I hear that on the other side, because, you know, the way I do my research is I go to right-wing conferences and strategy gatherings, and I've started hearing leaders use this sort of framing, and that speaks to their divisions. They have a lot of divisions, and we should exploit them. I think the most exploitable and obvious division is between the agenda of the funders and the agenda of the rank and file voters, who when you strip away the religious nationalism and some of the identity politics that they endorse, they really want a better deal for themselves and for the workforce. And this administration, this sort of anti-democratic movement is not going to give it to them. We've been speaking, among other things, about the book Money, Lies, and God,

Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, with the book money lies and God inside the movement to destroy American democracy with the book's author, Catherine Stewart. Catherine, always a great to have you on. Thank you so much. Thank you. If you're still using a free email service, your emails are often being scanned and tracked. Even after you delete them, companies use the data to know everything about you and show you ads, even your most personal communications. Thank you, David. Let's go to the David Pakman slash Pacman to get 50% off your first year. That's about $2 a month for a personal plan or about $3 a month for a business plan. Plus get 25% off additional accounts for team members. That's S T a R T mail.com slash Pacman for 50% off.

The link is in the podcast notes. Donald Trump's press secretary, Caroline Leavitt went on Fox news last night and delivered what I can really only describe as a total face plant in real time. Another one of these lie riddled interviews. And remember, she's a Christian, deeply spiritual. Her faith is very important to her, yet it seems to do nothing to prevent her from lying uncontrollably. So here's what went down after the Supreme Court's decision, which allows the federal government to proceed with certain deportations. She got in front of the camera and with a straight face said to Jesse Waters that this

proves Trump has always been right. Unfortunately, she tells no shortage of lies during this interview. Listen to this. This is a massive legal victory, Jesse, a massive victory for law and order and for our constitutional republic and the sovereignty of the United States of America. He called on the Supreme Court to rein in these activist judges like Judge Boasberg, who was completely out of line

in trying to say that the president didn't have the executive authority to deport foreign terrorists off of our soil. We have always maintained the position at the White House that the president was well within his constitutional authority to do so.

And this decision proves that President Trump and our administration have always been right from the beginning. He will continue to utilize the Alien Enemies Act to remove foreign terrorists and Tren de Aragua members, vicious gang members from American communities. And because of this ruling, the United States of America is a much safer place. Our team will get to work tomorrow to deport these heinous, violent foreign terrorists from our neighborhoods. Sounds very tough, right? Sounds extraordinarily

alpha. Here's the problem. It's all completely made up. We we know that dozens of the people rounded up under this program have no criminal record, no gang ties, and were actively involved in court cases with regard to their status here. Some were in compliance with everything that the law asked for them up until that point. One had a tattoo for autism awareness. One's a gay hairdresser that you've heard so much about. These are the people that Trump's team is labeling heinous, violent foreign terrorists. It's cartoonish. It's disgusting. And it really reminds me that this is not about law and order for all of the yet another instance of projection for all of the crowing about law and order from Trump during the campaign. All this is about is

fear, propaganda and political theater. And by the way, the court didn't rule that Trump was right. The ruling was narrow. It was procedural and it explicitly doesn't say that Trump's actions are constitutional or legal, but Trump world doesn't care about the facts. They want the headline. And the worst part is that Caroline Leavitt knows this. She's not confused. She knows who she's speaking to on Fox news. She knows who they're deporting. She knows that this isn't about threats to national security.

They want to dehumanize immigrants. They want to turn them into political pawns and they want to rebrand what is simply cruelty as being really strong. They call themselves Christians, but they round up families and deport working class people with no criminal records. They push these xenophobic talking points on live TV. So this is a collapse. It's a moral collapse. It's an ethical collapse, certainly a human collapse.

And every single time, you know, you see Jesse Waters smirking and nodding along there every time this stuff airs unchallenged on Fox News, the country inches further away from sanity. And notice that they claim immigrants are lawless, dangerous rule breakers, and they turn around and they ignore due process. They detain people who already have court dates that they're waiting for and they take an 18th century law and sort of stretch it like taffy almost beyond recognition. And the truth is that it's all projection because the lawlessness that they accuse others of is exactly

what they're doing. It's not hypocrisy. It's just a strategy. And they're not trying to solve a problem here. If they were trying to solve a problem, they wouldn't target compliant immigrants with no criminal history who are in the process of handling whatever specific situation they are in. But they've deported some of those people because they're running a show. It's kind of like a bread and circus for the MAGA base type of situation. And deporting a guy with a clean record and a rainbow pin seems easier to them than doing the difficult work that we've been calling for for a long time, which is let's reform the immigration system. Let's tackle the real crime. But I don't know. Some of these people looked foreign. They

had tattoos that could have been something. We're not really sure. That's all that matters to Trump world. Donald Trump invited the World Series winning Los Angeles Dodgers to the White House and his brain seemed to fall out. Donald Trump, who listen, I don't need presidents to understand baseball. I don't need presidents to understand baseball. I don't know that Trump understands anything. Make heads or tails out of the year. The Dodgers faced down adversity. You entered the playoffs battered and bruised, but not broken.

When you ran out the healthy arms, you ran out of really healthy. They had great arms, but they ran out. It's it's called sports. It's a little thing I like to call sports. A beautiful term, old fashioned term, never really heard it used. But sports, that's that's what it is called baseball in particular. And pitchers, I guess you could say, and really particular sports is called pitchers really in particular. Oh wow. That's interesting.

I don't know that Trump understands baseball, which is fine. I don't need presidents to understand baseball, but I am left to wonder. He doesn't understand tariffs. He doesn't understand groceries. He doesn't understand foreign policy and he also doesn't understand baseball. Is there anything that he understands? Trump, of course, with that look on his face where he's reading his speeches and surprised by the content as if he's reading a news article. OK, Trump then shaking hands with Max Muncy, impressed with the strength of his arms.

Arms are very strong when I touch. I'm used to shaking politicians and hitting their arm is like jello. And now it's like now it's like steel. All these guys, you know, I have to tell you that this that's actually kind of funny. And I'm going to make a broader point about this in a moment. But before before that, Trump also said he's not going to introduce some senators because he doesn't like them. And I know it's like, oh, my goodness, this is actually Trump at his best. And I'll explain new congressman. But he's been there a long time in a in a mental sense because he has really done a

job and he knows congress very well he was with me for seven years brian jack congratulations and others we have a couple of senators here i just don't particularly like him so i won't introduce over the course of listen, Trump ignores decorum in so many different ways. OK, this is to a degree why Trump won. This is the same stuff that Trump does when he hangs out for three hours with the with the Nelk boys. This this is a genuine it's one of those rare moments where he's being genuine and it's the charisma that we've talked about.

This stuff really resonates with people. Biden wasn't that good at it. Kamala Harris was terrible at it. Barack Obama was excellent, excellent at it. And even, you know, in in the world of presidential events, inviting winning teams to the White House, which is what we're seeing here. You see this under all presidents. What if this is like a gimme?

OK, everybody's happy. You're celebrating winners. Everybody's dressed up. They're happy to be with the president. Okay. This is like the easiest thing. Trump actually turns this into, man, that's kind of funny. And he seems sort of personable and he's telling some jokes that actually seem kind of like tailored to the room. Biden wasn't very good at it. Harris wasn't good at it. Obama was really good at it. This actually does matter. And it goes to what I've been talking to elected officials about, which is in thinking about candidates for 26 and 28 and how to frame campaigns and how to kind of put people out

there. You need to find the people that are already what fits rather than finding someone that some focus group says has policies that test well and then trying to mold their public persona and personality, you know, fitting a circle into a square peg or whatever metaphor you want to use. It really just doesn't work. And so for all of Trump's failings that the comment about I shake politicians hands and they're like jello, but this guy's strong, you strong. It's all sort of cringy, but it actually is just a little vignette of what people like

about this guy. And it is the form of charisma that resonates well across party lines. We just have to acknowledge it and recognize that that has to be a component of whoever ultimately is representing the democratic party on the bonus show today. We will talk about Republicans in police, increasingly blaming Trump for the economic instability. We will talk about the justice department scrapping its crypto unit as crypto regulations will be loosened even further. And Elon Musk's X is going to clamp down on parody accounts, parody, a well known protected form of speech doesn't matter on X. The free speech warrior, Elon Musk, Musk,

Musk's Elon Musk is going to muck it up. All of those stories on today's bonus show. Make sure to sign up at join Pacman dot com. Please get on my Substack newsletter if they come after me. It's the only way I'll be able to let you know what's going on. David Pacman dot Substack dot com. You can also sign up at David Pacman dot com or just send an email to info at David Pacman dot com and say, get me on that newsletter, sir. All of those stories on the bonus show. I'll see you then.

And we'll be back here tomorrow.